Haibun: Neighborhood Music
“Time is the longest distance between two places.” Tennessee Williams, The Glass Menagerie

Mrs. Williamson was a crochety old woman. She had a thousand sets of collected salt and pepper shakers, windows hung with handmade lace, and a hand wound old Victrola up in her bedroom. Sometimes through the neighborhood you could hear the scratchy music winding through the neighborhood. “You can bring Sal she’s a real nice gal but don’t bring Lulu” or, “He was going down the grade making 90 miles an hour, His whistle broke into a scream, He was found in the wreck with his hand on the throttle, Scalded to death by the steam”. The wreck of the Old 97 was her song when she was melancholy and sipping on sherry. Of course she died, in the midst of 1950’s rock and roll and bee bop aloo-ing whining. She left me her Victrola and half of her salt and pepper shakers because I would play with them when I visited.
summer nights seem empty
without the sound of old songs –
stars fall from the sky